2011-2012 Reading List: Annotated

Twelve-year-old Joey MacTagert’s dad wants his son to carry on the family tradition of hunting. But Joey has “buck fever”—he can’t pull the trigger on a deer, and hates the idea of killing animals. He’s more interested in art and hockey, two activities that his dad barely acknowledges.

Joey’s dad wants him to use his special skill in tracking to hunt down the big antlered buck that roams the woods near their home. Joey knows how to track Old Buck, but has kept secret from his father the reason he’s gained the deer’s trust. When trouble between his parents seems to escalate, Joey and his older sister, Philly, find themselves in the middle of tensions they don’t fully understand. Joey wants to keep the peace, and if conquering his buck fever will do it, he has to try.

Grade level: 5-8
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

The CompoundS.A. Bodeen

Eli and his family have lived in the underground Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone, and they’ve become accustomed to their new life. Accustomed, but not happy. No amount of luxury can stifle the dull routine of living in the same place, with only his two sisters, only his father and mother, doing the same thing day after day after day. As problems with their carefully planned existence threaten to destroy their sanctuary—and their sanity—Eli can’t help but wonder if he’d rather take his chances outside. Eli’s father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe—really?

Grade level: 8 and up
Publisher: Square Fish

Crossing StonesHelen Frost

Eighteen-year-old Muriel Jorgensen lives on one side of Crabapple Creek. Her family’s closest friends, the Normans, live on the other. For as long as Muriel can remember, the families’ lives have been intertwined, connected by the crossing stones that span the water. But now that Frank Norman—who Muriel is just beginning to think might be more than a friend—has enlisted to fight in World War I and her brother, Ollie, has lied about his age to join him, the future is uncertain. As Muriel tends to things at home with the help of Frank’s sister, Emma, she becomes more and more fascinated by the women’s suffrage movement, but she is surrounded by people who advise her to keep her opinions to herself. How can she find a way to care for those she loves while still remaining true to who she is?

Grade level: 7 and up
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fly GirlSherri Smith

All Ida Mae Jones wants to do is fly. Her daddy was a pilot, and years after his death she feels closest to him when she's in the air. But as a young black woman in 1940s Louisiana, she knows the sky is off limits to her, until America enters World War II, and the Army forms the WASP — Women Airforce Service Pilots. Ida has a chance to fulfill her dream if she's willing to use her light skin to pass as a white girl. She wants to fly more than anything, but Ida soon learns that denying one's self and family is a heavy burden, and ultimately it's not what you do but who you are that's most important.

Grade level: 7 and up
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

Heist SocietyAlly Carter

Katarina Bishop was enjoying her boring life at boarding school. Unfortunately the boring life wasn’t going to be her life for long. Just when she thought she was out of the art thieving business she is brought back into it when her father is the only suspect in a huge hit. Katarina and her teenage crew of thieves must steal back the paintings before her father gets hurt by the mobster whose paintings were stolen.

Grade level: 6 and up
Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class PresidentJosh Lieb

Twelve-year-old Oliver Watson's got the IQ of a grilled cheese sandwich. Or so everyone in Omaha thinks. In reality, Oliver's a mad evil genius on his way to world domination, and he's used his great brain to make himself the third-richest person on earth! Then Oliver's father — and archnemesis — makes a crack about the upcoming middle school election, and Oliver takes it as a personal challenge. He'll run, and he'll win! Turns out, though, that overthrowing foreign dictators is actually way easier than getting kids to like you… Can this evil genius win the class presidency and keep his true identity a secret, all in time to impress his dad?

Grade level: 5-8
Publisher: Penguin Group

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and DivorcedNujood Ali

Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. She was only ten years old.

Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled—not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money. When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood’s case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood’s courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Her story even incited change in Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries, where underage marriage laws are being increasingly enforced and other child brides have been granted divorces.

Grade level: 7 and up
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Jump the CracksStacy DeKeyser

On the way to visit her father in New York City, fifteen-year-old Victoria finds an apparently abused child in the train's bathroom and soon finds herself branded a kidnapper and on the run while trying to fulfill her promise to protect the boy at all costs.

Grade level: 6-9
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.

The Last Thing I RememberAndrew Klavan

High school student Charlie West awakens bloody and bruised in a concrete bunker, only to discover that he has lost a year of his life and remembers nothing about escaping from prison after being convicted of murdering his former best friend, or why he is being pursued by both the law and a group of terrorists trying to bring down the government of the United States.

Grade level: 8 and up
Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc.

LeviathanScott Westerfeld

In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts.

Grade level: 7-10
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

The Maze RunnerJames Dashner

Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape…

Grade level: 7-10
Publisher: Random House Children's Books

My Fair GodmotherJanette Rallison

After her boyfriend dumps her for her older sister, sophomore Savannah Delano wishes she could find a true prince to take her to the prom. Enter Chrissy (Chrysanthemum) Everstar: Savannah's gum-chewing, cell phone-carrying, high heel-wearing Fair Godmother. Showing why she's only Fair—because she's not a very good fairy student—Chrissy mistakenly sends Savannah back in time to the Middle Ages, first as Cinderella, then as Snow White. Finally she sends Tristan, a boy in Savannah's class, back instead to turn him into her prom-worthy prince. When Savannah returns to the Middle Ages to save Tristan, they must team up to defeat a troll, a dragon, and the mysterious Black Knight.

Grade level: 7-10
Publisher: Walker & Company

The Not-So-Great DepressionAmy Goldman Koss

Fourteen-year-old Jacki and her two siblings live a chauffeured, private-school life with their executive mom in a rich Los Angeles neighborhood. Their father is more of a free spirit, and when they visit him, they are inducted into such delightful chores as vegetable gardening. At first, they are optimistic. Jacki's mother has a promising job interview and she is convinced that any day she will hear the news that she has a new job and their lifestyle can continue unimpeded. But when that job doesn't pan out everything in their upper-middle-class lifestyle is up for grabs, from their daily habit of eating out, to their private school tuition, to their luxury home with a pool out back.

Grade level: 7-9
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

PopAUTHOR

Lonely after a midsummer move to a new town, sixteen-year-old high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan becomes friends with a retired professional linebacker who is great at training him, but whose childish behavior keeps Marcus in hot water.

Grade level: 6-9
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

RecklessCornelia Funke

Jacob and Will Reckless have looked out for each other ever since their father disappeared, but when Jacob discovers a magical mirror that transports him to a warring world populated by witches, giants, and ogres, he keeps it to himself until Will follows him one day, with dire consequences.

Grade level: 6-10
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers

The Reinvention of Moxie RooseveltElizabeth Kimmel

Moxie Roosevelt Kipper has endured thirteen years of being an ordinary girl with an unordinary name. Now that she's entered boarding school, the time is ripe to reinvent herself. She'll become unusual, outlandish, unexpected, sassy - someone worthy of a name like "Moxie." But who exactly? From Mysterious Earth Goddess to Hale and Hearty Sports Enthusiast; from Detached, Unique, Coolly Knowing Individual to Assertive Revolutionary Activist, Moxie tries them all, while keeping her true talent for piano-playing a secret. But at boarding school, Moxie isn't the only one who isn't what she claims to be.

Each year the Young Adult Reading Program (YARP) Committee of the South Dakota Library Association publishes a list to promote quality literature and to help South Dakota teachers and librarians in selecting and promoting books for adolescents. The books are selected from among the many young adult and adult books that have received positive reviews by national reviewing periodicals.